As local police departments cut personnel due to excessive spending and budgetary restrictions, cities all across America are rapidly degenerating into gang infested war zones.

In the city of Chicago, which has been one of the hardest hit during the opening stages of a greater depression sweeping the country, law enforcement officials compared the situation on the ground to the kind of tribal warfare one might see in places like Iraq. With law and order breaking down, residents of the city have been caught in the middle. The crime wave has gotten so bad, in fact, that earlier this year the Chicago PD announced a new response plan, or rather, a NON-response plan, wherein police will not even show up at crime scenes unless someone has been critically injured or the perpetrator is still on the scene.

This, of course, has been a boon for criminals looking to take advantage of the situation. And earlier this week they did just that.

Unbelievable surveillance video captured flash mobs dashing into store after store and running out with armloads and sometimes entire racks of sporting goods.

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It’s like a next-generation flash mob. Originally, flash mob referred to a group of people doing a performance to draw attention to something in a positive way. The term gave way to a more sinister motive.

“They used to just be fun. They used to just be positive and now, I don’t know, it seems to have turned into something negative,” said one shopper.

No one was hurt in the three incidents, though it’s clear the mob stops for no one.

Some city officials in Chicago have even appealed to the state and federal government for help, recently calling for martial law to be declared and for the military to intervene.

This is the state of affairs in the U.S., and the organized crime waves are spreading.

Residents in suburbs of Oakland and Houston have been forced to hire private security teams to help maintain law and order in their neighborhoods, while millions of Americans across the country are arming up in those jurisdictions that allow firearms ownership.

Chicago, it seems, is an example of what happens when law and order breaks down and residents have no way of protecting themselves because of restrictive gun laws.

A look at the surveillance footage above shows how indiscriminately a large mob of individuals behaves. As Tess Pennington notes in her preparedness series on Flash Mobs, if you ever encounter a flash mob threat, remember who you are dealing with:

For the most part the participants of these mobs are urban delinquents whose only goal is to steal and cause violence.

The recent events in Chicago involve teens and young adults looking to steal apparel.

What happens when these groups finally realize they can get a lot more than that?

It’s only a matter of time before the contagion spreads to more serious criminal elements that will target individuals directly in the form of flash mob robberies in places like subway cars, banks, or jewelry stores. And as their efforts go unchecked by police, they will likely increase in scope and violence.

In 2011, a large flash mob targeted patrons of the Wisconsin State Fair. Witnesses report that the racially motivated mob involving hundreds of individuals was, “attacking everybody for no reason whatsoever.” Most of the victims were white.

We’ve already seen how quickly these mobs works and how violent they can be. Once it starts it can’t be stopped.

Now imagine what it will look like when these people can no longer afford to purchase basic essentials like food.